Integrate Dify with Live Salesforce Data via CData Connect AI
Dify is an open source platform for building production-ready agentic workflows, chatbots, and other LLM applications. It includes built-in, two-way support for the model context protocol (MCP), allowing you to register remote MCP servers as tools in the platform to add external data sources and give your agents access to live data.
By integrating Dify with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP Server, Dify gains governed, real-time access to live Salesforce data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Salesforce data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.
This article explains how to configure Salesforce connectivity in Connect AI, generate the required personal access token, register the Connect AI MCP Server as a tool in Dify, add it to an agent application, and verify the integration by querying live Salesforce data from Dify.
About Salesforce Data Integration
Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:
- Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
- Create atomic and batch update operations.
- Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
- Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
- See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
- Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.
Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:
- other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
- preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
- databases and data warehouses.
For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.
Getting Started
Step 1: Configure Salesforce connectivity for Dify
Connectivity to Salesforce from Dify is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Salesforce data from Dify, start by creating and configuring a Salesforce connection in Connect AI.
- Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
- Select Salesforce from the Add Connection panel
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Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click Sign in to authenticate with Salesforce
- Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions
Add a Personal Access Token
A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Dify. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each integration to maintain granular access control.
- Click the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open Settings
- On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT
- Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create
- Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again
With the Salesforce connection configured and a PAT generated, Dify can now connect to Salesforce data through Connect AI.
Step 2: Register the Connect AI MCP Server in Dify
Next, register the Connect AI Remote MCP Server as a tool in Dify so your agents and workflows can discover and call live data tools through Connect AI.
- Log into Dify, or open your self-hosted Dify instance (version 1.6.0 or later, which includes built-in MCP support)
- Navigate to the Integrations page, select Tools and click MCP tab
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Click Add MCP Server (HTTP) and enter the following details:
- Server URL: https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp
- Name Icon: Give a descriptive name, for example, CData Connect AI
- Server Identifier: A unique identifier, for example, cdata-connect-ai
- Headers: Add an Authorization header with the value Basic your_base64_encoded_email_PAT
Note: Dify will use Basic authentication with Connect AI. Combine your Connect AI user email and the PAT you created earlier in the format email:PAT, base64 encode the combined string, and prefix it with Basic.
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Click Add & Authorize. Dify connects to the Connect AI MCP Server and lists the available tools
With the MCP server registered, the Connect AI tools are available to any agent application or workflow in your Dify workspace.
Step 3: Query live Salesforce data from Dify
With the integration complete, build an agent application in Dify and interact with live Salesforce data through natural language prompts.
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From the Dify Studio page, click Create from Blank and select Agent as the application type
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In the agent configuration, click Add under the Tools section and select the Connect AI MCP tools registered in Step 2
- Select an LLM provider and model for the agent so it can interpret prompts and call MCP tools
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In the preview panel, type a prompt in the chat input, for example:
- Use the cdata-connect-ai tools to list all available catalogs
- Show the available schemas and tables for Salesforce
- Query the top 5 records from a table in Salesforce
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The Dify agent calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Salesforce data
At this point, Dify communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Salesforce data through remote MCP tools directly from your agentic workflows.
Get started with CData Connect AI
To access hundreds of SaaS, big data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today. Download a free 14-day trial of CData Connect AI, and our Support Team is available to help with any questions you have.